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For Buddhism, Science is Not a Killer of Religion

By Paul Wallace

…really knows how to drive, it seems, and the water buffalo and cows are outnumbered in the streets only by the small and fast-moving motorized rickshaws. So when I was taking a four-hour taxi ride from Delhi to Agra I had to have something to distract my attention from the harrowing video game-like scene out the front window. A friend who was riding with me handed me a book called What Makes You Not a Buddhist. Written by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse…

Muslims in America, Fifty Years Later: New Poll Shows Pride and Optimism In the Face of Bias

By Edward E. Curtis IV

…ength to believe in a better future. Muslim Americans also report that the number of non-Muslims who have been kind to them has risen in the past year. They believe in the American dream by a greater percentage than non-Muslim Americans. Over nine out of ten Muslims say that they are proud to be American. The question this poll raises for non-Muslims is: over the next fifty years, will our actions strengthen or weaken the surprising optimism of Mu…

5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Overthink the New Pew Data’s Impact on Politics

By Sarah Posner

…(down eight percent in seven years, to 70.6 percent), and the rise in the number of Americans identifying as atheist, agnostic, and otherwise religiously unaffiliated (up six points in seven years, to 22.8 percent). Greg Smith, Associate Director of Research at the Pew Research Center, called the pace of the continued growth of the religiously unaffiliated “really remarkable.” The number of Americans identifying with no religion grew by 19 millio…

Forget Right or Wrong

By Elizabeth Drescher

…researchers share the unsurprising finding that “young adults engage in a number of religious practices less often than do older Americans.” What they may mean to say is traditional religious practices: weekly attendance at religious services, weekly scripture reading, daily prayer, and weekly meditation. (My guess is as good as yours on the greater expected frequency of prayer in the survey.) The Pew survey design is problematic—and this is wher…

The Episcopal Church ‘Takes a Flying Leap’ into Controversies Old and New

By Elizabeth Drescher

…specific.” “In sharing our stories,” said Partridge, who testified with a number of transgender Episcopalians and their advocates before the deputies and bishops, “we were really trying to be very specific” about the experiences of transgender people in the Church. This experience, he said, “is something that we really need to name at this time in the Church. We just believed this was important in reflecting not only our own lives but also the li…

PRRI’s Robert P. Jones Discusses Authoritarianism, Christian Nationalism, and What the 2024 Election is Really About

By Daniel Schultz

…enship? Or should we identify them and deport them? The general population number is about 60-40: a little more than six in 10 Americans [agree with a] path to citizenship and the rest are divided among these other positions. But what we’ve seen are two things. The [second] option has thinned out a little bit and the deportation number [option 3] has gone up. That’s mostly been because Republicans have shifted. They’ve actually followed the lead o…

What’s in a Name? Religious Nones and the American Religious Landscape

By Richard Flory

…publicly proclaim their disbelief. These reactions to the increase in the number of people classified as “religious Nones” represent an assumption based on a market approach of religion and an understanding of religion as a binary reality. Just like any other business, success in the religious marketplace is the goal, and it is measured by the number of people who identify with your particular brand of religion (or irreligion as the case may be)….

RD News Round-Up—Oct.14, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…on 8 donations from Brad Pitt, Steven Spielberg, and PG&E—has aggravated a number of Christian Right leaders including Randy Thomasson, the head of the Campaign for Children and Families (CCF), who has called for a boycott of Google. “There needs to be a response from people who will say, ‘I’m not going to put a dime of my money or time into businesses that are attacking the sacred institution of marriage,’” Thomasson told the AFA’s OneNewsNow. As…

How a Powerful ‘Ex-Gay’ Pastor is Chasing the Latino Vote

By Katherine Stewart

…ersuade their congregations to vote their “biblical” values. A substantial number of Church United gatherings are conducted in the Spanish language, and the organization has spawned at least one affiliate, Alianza de Pastores Unidos de San Diego, whose members minister to largely Spanish-speaking audiences. It wasn’t always this way, of course, and it isn’t going to change overnight. Many of the southern white evangelical groups that remain entren…

What Color is Vatican Smoke?

By Marian Ronan

…, seven thousand black South Africans were killed under apartheid, and the number imprisoned was far higher. The Catholic Church neither kills nor imprisons ordained women and their supporters; excommunication, while painful, is not at all the same, even when financial losses accompany it. In 2007 I published an article in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion explaining in some detail why highly educated white women simply cannot say that t…